SJ POWELL
SJ Powell is a speculative fiction writer based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Their work is concerned with non-human being(s), animal others, and worlds that are not our own. They received a BA in English, Africana Studies, and Environmental Studies from Williams College. They are a member of the hotbed artist collective.
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01 MOONCALF
The farmer in the cowl snatches the poison the moment my back is turned. I flip the iron latch of my leather kit, withdraw the syringe, and tell him, without looking, “That is for your mooncalf, not you. You’d be wise to put that back where you found it.”
When I face about, the needle of the syringe held aloft like the rapier of a deathless man, the farmer does not flinch.
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02 KUDZU BOY DREAMING
This is a dream so he comes across his boy who is awake and smiling at him with a mouth full of pebbles. What remains of his eyes are sunken pits in his face. From within shines a loamy-green glow that casts half-light on the dancing shadows of the kudzu patch. All around his boy is the smell of putrid meat, rotting fruit, and wilted flowers.
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03 THE COMPANION
I was getting close to you. My whole body knew it. Forgive me when I say my teeth grew large and heavy in my mouth. My beastly mind conjured sweet, torturous memories of your blood on my tongue, the tang of your iron, the fact of your life and my dominion over it. When my jaw throbbed and my gums ached, could you feel it? Did my bite haunt you over light-years, through the vast annals of space? Did you still feel me?
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04 BROOD BABY
It wasn’t the resin itself that granted the House awareness. It was the young wasps creched inside. Lending the House their sweet dreams of metamorphosis. Now, the House could think and dream, it could change its shape as it pleased. Now, the House ached.
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05 PLAYHOUSE ANDROIDS’ LAMENT ON THE ICE-MOON GALATEA
Spirit claims to prophesize. Any android with enough processing power can pull patterns from massive sets of data and intuit a string of plausible events and motions. Is that the same thing as seeing the future?
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